New research suggests that protecting and restoring wildlife can enhance natural carbon capture mechanisms and mitigate climate change.
Introducing natural solutions to combat climate change by protecting and enhancing carbon dioxide uptake in terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems has the added benefit of protecting animal species.
While many current natural climate solutions focus on protecting and restoring plant ecosystems, researchers say they overlook another way to curb negative emissions. it’s a wild animal. The process of using wildlife conservation to enhance carbon capture and storage is called Animating the Carbon Cycle (ACC).
However, to make the most of the ACC, animal species must be conserved and returned to sufficient numbers to perform their ecological function.
A new study by 15 scientists from eight countries shows that wild animals play an important role in controlling carbon cycles on land and in water through behaviors such as foraging, trampling, burrowing, seed dispersal and eco-engineering. It is important.
“Wildlife species are the missing link between biodiversity and climate through their interaction with the environment,” said Oswald Schmitz, lead author of the study. “This interaction means that rewilding can be one of the best nature-based climate solutions available to humanity.”
Researchers studied nine species of wildlife—marine fish, whales, sharks, gray wolves, wildebeest, sea otters, musk oxen, African forest elephants, and American bison—and could save or restore populations of these animals. , discovered that additional captures are possible. 6.41 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year. This is 95% of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of keeping global warming below the 2.7 °F (1.5 °C) threshold.
They focused on larger animals because their ecological impacts tend to be more pronounced.In addition, they are more sensitive to human intervention, habitat loss and alteration.
However, the dynamics of carbon uptake and storage depend on the presence of animals. With global wildlife populations declining by almost 70% over the past 50 years, researchers believe that pushing wildlife populations to the brink of extinction could turn their ecosystems from carbon sinks to carbon sources. I discovered that I have a gender.
The researchers recommend that current animal recovery efforts be strengthened and legislation, policies and funding be put in place to help protect animals whose numbers have been reduced by human intervention.
They know that adopting a nutrient rewilding approach to climate change requires a change of mindset.
“Scientific support for such efforts requires a shift in how we think and do research in Earth and ecosystem sciences, to incorporate and quantify animal control over the carbon cycle,” said the researchers. I’m here. “Furthermore, policy thinking needs to change to recognize that nutrient rewilding can be an important part of natural climate solutions. There is urgency on both fronts because we are discovering how functionally they affect carbon dioxide capture and storage.”
The study was published in a journal nature climate change.
Source: Yale University
